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Twilight: The death of the vampire genre.

As a little kid, I used to sneak downstairs in the middle of the night and watch whatever monster movies were on tv. More often than not, there were slasher flicks on, but every so often, there’d be a vampire movie on and my face would light up like the fourth of July. Even as I got older i couldn’t escape my love of vampire movies, from Bram Stokers Dracula to the first Blade movie. That’s right.. I liked Blade.

Besides blacksploitation movies such as Blacula and Vampire In Brooklyn, the vampire genre has been doing pretty good over the years. So, imagine my surprise when I discovered that there was a vampire film supposedly taking place in Washington state.. where I live. I was of course excited.. as anyone who likes vampire movies would be. So, I went to see the first movie with a good friend of mine. I figured another movie with vamps and werewolves would be good.. I mean.. look at Underworld.

Imagine my surprise after having finished the film. Vampires…sparkling. Sparkling…Now i’m no expert in the field of vampires, but I’ve seen enough movies, read enough books, and researched enough on the topic to say without a doubt that vampires have never, do not, and will never sparkle. Sunlight kills.. it doesn’t make them glimmer.

Aside from the blasphemy of contradiction that is sparkling vampires, there was the acting of the movie. There seemed to be soo many ways that the movie could have improved.. could have been made… at the very least watchable. Everything about the acting seemed stilted to say the least. Sure you had R Pat in the movie who was Cedric D. in Harry Potter and he did a fairly standard job in that role, but as a Cullens boy, he just failed… completely and utterly failed. His character was far too moody and in all the wrong ways.

And the “heroine” of the movie.. and I use that term more loosely than I ever have in my entire life, was completely and utterly helpless. What kind of role model is that? Just sitting back and letting her vampy boyfriend and lycan guy friend take care of all her woes. That paints a poor picture in my mind. What happened to empowering, having strong female characters who kicked butt? The character of Bella is by far one of the weakest female roles in any modern movie I’ve had the pleasure/displeasure of seeing. And don’t get me started on her “something stinks” face. You know the face I’m talking about. In every scene, she looks like she just smelled the stinkiest thing she’s ever smelled in her life. Maybe it’s just her acting she’s catching a whiff of.?.

The only thing about this movie that even gave me cause to consider watching after the first movie was the presence of Taylor Lautner. He may not have been the best actor in the world, but in this movie, he made for cinematic gold. Of course it helped that he’s really easy on the eyes as well. His character was the only one in the entire movie I could connect with, the only one to seem to show anything resembling real emotion.

Now, to quote a friend: “Well I mean the books are badly written, but fans falling in love with fictional characters and yelling high and low about it are more annoying. ”

I’d seriously have to agree with him there. As much as I dislike the franchise.. and I really dislike it.. I dislike its followers just a bit more. I mean.. they fuel the franchise.. don’t they.?.

All this aside.. I regret the time I spent watching that movie. It’s time I’ll never ever get back. If it were at all possible, I’d demand my money back; not from the theatres or the actors who were doing their job.. no matter how poorly they did it, but from Stephanie Meyers herself. Her stilted and hacked “writing” is the reason for this movie. I would say she should be forced to write letters of apology to everyone who had to sit through that mess, but we’d probably end up with something even worse written than Twilight.

That being said… it took many people the world out to continue the myth of the immortal creature known as the vampire, but only one woman to kill it.

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3 comments on “Twilight: The death of the vampire genre.”

I have to agree with you on Twilight. I didn’t bother watching it as my students told me the story and I could see it was a horrid teenage girl’s wet dream of a ‘vampire’ tale. I shall miss the old school movies about Dracula and his minions…